Formula 1 2012 Round 8: European Grand Prix

After an exciting weekend in Canada the F1 circus returns to Europe for the 8th round of the championship at the Valencia street circuit. Racing around what is in essence a container port converted into a swanky port area for the Americas Cup some years ago, both car and drivers face some unique challenges. With a mix of high speed straights and low speed corners, braking efficiency is very important given the circuits total of 25 corners. They also serve a craking Mojito up by the swing bridge.

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TyresFrom a riverside street course in Canada we now head to a seaside street course in Europe. In common with the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, the Valencia Street Course has several high speed sections, however it has more corners. The layout and track surface is more aggressive to the tyres than in Montreal so do not expect the same challenge for teams to get maximum performance from the compounds as in Canada. The P Zero White medium tyres and P Zero Yellow soft tyres have been nominated for this race and there is almost zero chance of rain. If the track is wet then someone in the paddock club spilt their bubbly.
This combination of tyres highlights both the durability and performance of the tyres, on a circuit where overtaking is notoriously difficult. Just like Monaco, qualifying will be crucial, and the speed of the soft tyre will be vital when it comes to boosting drivers up the start order. In the race, the strength and consistency of the medium tyre will form an essential part of the strategy.
Many of the corners are fast and flow into each other, making overtaking difficult as there is little room for manoeuvre and not a huge speed differential between the cars. The final sequence of corners is taken in rapid succession at 290kph, followed by a heavy braking area into the last corner where the cars go from 310 to 60kph in less than 130 metres. The deceleration peaks at 5.2g, with a big risk of locking up a wheel, but the layout of the corner means that it is still not easy to pass the car in front.
This will put the emphasis on strategy, as cars try to get past each other in the pits as well as on the track.
Last year, the frontrunners all adopted the same strategy: starting on the soft tyre and stopping three times before completing a final stint on the medium tyre. With the cars more closely matched than ever, the right tactics will be even more important this time.
Like all street circuits, the track evolution over the course of the weekend will be notable as more and more rubber is laid down.

EnginesValencia’s positioning as a street circuit incorrectly conjures up comparisons with Monaco or Singapore, but in reality its characteristics couldn’t be more different. A combination of 25 corners with average speeds around 200kmh and regular top speeds in the region of 300kmh makes Valencia a faster track than the more typical street circuits. The stop-start nature of the track requires good corner exit speed and engine torque particularly when exiting the lower speed turns like 2, 10 and 17, as well as the final left-hander heading back onto the main straight.

“Valencia is similar to Melbourne in many ways,” he begins. “There are long straights that end in a lot of first, second and third gear corners, which means you almost stop the car before reapplying full throttle. It’s this succession of constant braking and on, off throttle application that leads to high fuel consumption.

“As an average figure, we usually use 0.5kg of fuel per kilometre. Montreal, which is high on fuel consumption, was about 2.15kg per lap. For Valencia, however, we are around 2.7kg per lap. Obviously it massively depends on the weather, but Valencia is normally sunny and dry so fuel consumption will be at this highest level.

“In Valencia you know you are going to be tight on fuel but the teams are always looking to reduce the size of the fuel cell to optimise packaging elsewhere. The emphasis is therefore placed on the engine manufacturer to reduce consumption as much as possible so the fuel cell can be justifiably decreased in size.

“It’s not as simple as running leaner to use less fuel – that is, running less rich engine mixtures and burning less – as you lose engine performance the leaner you run. It also means the engine reliability is compromised so you fall into a place where you have to weigh up performance and respective gains versus risk.”

Compromise… a word which has cropped up regularly over recent races. But at a track where running to the limit on fuel and using the engine at maximum performance are the keys, how does one begin to find such a happy medium?

“We’re always running engines on the dyno to learn more about the usability of the units. We can still improve consumption on full or partial throttle. We can also optimise the way we use the fuel to slow the car too, for example when downshifting. The engine is ‘blipped’ when the driver shifts down a gear to decelerate, but fuel is still used for this. In fact, this is one of the main areas we can save fuel; clever settings could save around 1% of fuel consumption over the course of the lap, which equates to around 1.5kg over the course of a race – not an insignificant amount when you consider how close the field is this year.”

External factors also have a great effect on the fuel consumption, Rémi explains. “When you get to the eighth race of the season you already have a fairly good bank of data regarding how factors such as tyre degradation and DRS usage affect the rate of consumption, particularly bearing in mind that going from qualifying to the race we switch from fresh tyres to used tyres and potentially from full DRS to one straight line DRS. The difference in using DRS on the main straight or not at Montreal, for example, was worth 2 to 3% of fuel over a lap.

“To get the optimum performance over a race distance, we don’t necessarily use the richer settings all the time. As an example, in the last 20 laps of a race, running the leanest mode as opposed to a performance mode could save you 5kg of fuel at the start of the race, which is worth around 0.2s per lap.

“We can also burn more fuel if required, should we find we get stuck behind traffic or after a safety car period. In this instance we have excess fuel, so we attempt to burn this surplus to bring the car down to the planned weight. You can either burn it off quickly, or avoid switching to the leaner engine modes until later in the race, if at all.

“The choice will depend on how the race strategy unfolds. You have to work out where you want to be quickest; is it in the first part of the race, the middle part, or the end? It all depends on your strategy and where you think you will be on track, what battles you will be involved in, and when you will be pitting and what tyres you will be on. This strategic decision will impact not only the starting fuel load but also when and how you use that fuel.

“Normally you will always run the leanest at the end of the race, just because you try to gain track position in the first part of the Grand Prix. You look at the long term plan and you say, ‘OK, our target is to stop on lap 50 for the last pit stop,’ so you will need to run as fast as you can in the early part of the race to get the best position by the time you stop. As a result you want to run the engine at maximum performance with the lightest car. Therefore, your strategy will tend to push you towards using the richest setting to start with before switching to a very lean setting in the end.

“However, if your strategy works, you could also have to defend your position at the same time you are running in a lean mode…which is obviously not ideal. There are certain things you can do though to help, such as you do not need to run the same mixture setting all around the lap. You could, for instance, run lean round the corners and then opt for performance setting in the main straight: in this respect, using fuel settings becomes very similar to how you would use KERS to defend.”

In short, teams optimise the fuel put in the car to be fast according to individual strategy. “A good example of this is Romain Grosjean’s race in Canada,” continues Rémi. “He ran different settings throughout the race and depending on the race conditions adapted the settings to stick to the primary strategy and always get the fastest car. The team played the long game, and it all worked out perfectly for him.”

High track temperatures could be a problem in the race for many, with the ambient temperature well over 30 degrees the track could start to bake and that will play havoc with the KERS on some cars. Notably the Red Bull system struggles when it is hot.

Sam Collins has worked for Racecar Engineering for more than a decade. His passion for racing began during his work experience in the loom shop of Williams F1 aged 16 and he has been involved in the sport ever since. Sam attended Oxford Brookes University to study Automotive Engineering and has written for many publications since, including Motorsport News and Autosport. He is Associate Editor of Racecar Engineering

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